i got it bad (and that ain't good)
by bleuboxes
Summary: She does her best to act like she doesn't know that her high school heart-throb is in the same vicinity as her. She thinks she's doing a pretty good job at faking it. That is until Nat reminds her over breakfast one day that she isn't a spy for a reason. [soulmate au]


Darcy Lewis is not one who believes in all that wish-wash about soulmates. It isn't like she doesn't think such wish-wash exists (Jane and Thor are a tell-tale example of that), and it's not like the concept doesn't warm her hopeless romantic heart. She just finds it highly improbable of meeting her person in a world full of seven billion people (plus the alien realms) when she's probably going to be stuck in a lab with Jane and Tony for the rest of her life.

That's an exaggeration, she does have a social life, and she does get out of the city to visit her family every once in a while.

She also has no idea how to just _know_ that some random person is her soulmate, because, like, the soulmate gods or whatever decided to be even more problematic and totally screw her over – because she's one of the mark-less ones, and there are supposedly millions upon millions of ways that she's going to be able to pick her person out of a crowd.

Or she's just screwed and forced to live miserably and alone for the rest of her life in her cat-less apartment in Stark Tower (Darcy would like to point out that she is in no way being ungracious to Tony, she just doesn't get how Clint is allowed a dog with the 'no pets – no exceptions' policy and she isn't allowed a cat.)

And, like, what if her soulmate is a tree or something, like that's a possible reason for why she doesn't have a mark – because her soulmate can't fucking speak because it isn't even a person.

Basically, thinking about soulmates makes Darcy super sad and super angry (Jane's gotten in the habit of combining the two words to make 'smangry' because less time talking means more time to Science!)

"Darce!" a shout brings her out of her trance; she focuses and sees Jane, her hair singed, face black with soot and with little flaming embers on her sweater (which is actually Darcy's? what the hell, Jane?), and DUM-E holding some sort of smoldering machine and looking as self-satisfied as a robot can.

"Jane!" Darcy flares her hands out with a very big facial expression. Jane lets out an aggravated grunt. DUM-E beeps.

"I told you to get the bolt over there so I could screw it to the… the thing that I can't remember the name of right now so it wouldn't light me or itself on fire, but go on, continue your miserable moping session while I light myself on fire."

"Are you okay, first of all?" asks Darcy.

"Yeah, fine, _seriously_. Just, help me out with this motor real quick, would you."

"Sure thing."

"Hand me that wrench, would you?"

"Sure, Jane."

"The _other_ wrench, please."

"Here you go!"

" _For fucks sake, Darcy_."

"Hey, you ruined my favorite sweater; consider this payment instead of making me a new one."

* * *

Steve and Sam and Nat move into the tower a few weeks later. A few weeks after that, Steve brings in a friend that Darcy is pretty sure is fake because she never sees nor hears of him, and it's really starting to fucking agitate her.

She's not sure why, but she feels like Steve's friend is like that fake boyfriend that every girl makes up at least once in her life to make herself feel better about being the junior going to prom without a date (His name was Brad and he was in college, and super-hot and dreamy and sort of looked like Thor, not that this is relevant to anything, but Darcy feels like sharing.)

Not like that matters, because she finds out that Steve's friend is very, very real eventually.

As in, he's James Buchanan Barnes, who as it turns out, is not dead, and getting over a severe case of memory loss.

(Shout out to Sam for not caring about security protocol with her.)

She does her best to act like she doesn't know that her high school heart-throb is in the same vicinity as her (and alive? _What the fuck_?)

She thinks she's doing a pretty good job at faking it.

That is until Nat reminds her over breakfast one day that she isn't a spy for a reason.

Darcy pours her cornflakes on the Russian and viciously shoves her earbuds in her ears. She's been in a Sinatra mood lately, and not only is it some good-ass music, but it also calms her down.

So, Nat better be thanking Old Blue Eyes' himself that she didn't wake up with glitter all over her apartment the next day (Because Darcy was really, really considering it.)

* * *

It's mid-July when she hears a "status report" on the reformed soviet assassin (number two, as Nat puts it).

She doesn't mean to eavesdrop, really, but knowing other people's shit is Darcy's business and she just happens to be at the right place at the right time to hear Steve mention to Tony that Bucky keeps pestering him about Britney Spears (and by pestering, Steve really means Bucky's driving him up the fucking wall with blasting something that doesn't soothe his Motown needs.)

Darcy frowns, because she loves Brittney Spears, and it's weird that some old assassin dude born in nineteen something-teen is listening to Brittney while she's listening to Frank-Fucking-Sinatra.

She shrugs; history writes Bucky off as a little shit, and she's more inclined to believe it's just him messing with Steve rather than some weird soulmate voodoo shit that Jane's definitely going to push Darcy's way.

Which is why she doesn't tell Jane and writes it off as a mere coincidence.

* * *

"Darcy, for the love of Christ, it's been three weeks and I don't think I'm going to be able to continue to work in these conditions."

"What conditions?"

"The ones where you won't stop playing big-band – even when I asked you to put on your favorite mix from the two-thousands!" Darcy scrunches her eyes in confusion, and Jane drops her wrench with a frustrated huff, "The one with Stacy's Mom and all those other songs we listened to back in New Mexico before the Shitstorm happened!"

"Oh, right; yeah," she replies thoughtfully, "I'm just not feeling it lately."

"Well, you better start feeling it because if I have to listen to Sing Sing Sing one more fucking time, I'm gonna stab stab stab you."

"Jane, sweetie, you know I love you, but that might be the worst thing that's ever come out of your mouth, and I've seen you vomit up some weird-ass things."

Jane gives Darcy the finger, and returns to her Science-ing with Ella Fitzgerald's voice echoing in the background.

* * *

Darcy would like to say that she doesn't mean to spy on Bucky Barnes when he's working out (and sweaty and muscular and delicious), but she heard the sound of Pre-Hiatus Fall Out Boy coming from the too-loud speakers Tony has in the gym, and well, they used to be her shit back in the day, and she just couldn't walk away from that.

She's expecting to see that little kid that Steve's had around with him recently – Peter Parker, she thinks his name is – because this emo crap is again popular with the kiddies now-a-days; So, she's a little more than shocked to see Sergeant Barnes himself mouthing all the words to Dance, Dance as he beats the shit out of a punching bag.

If Darcy wasn't head over heels for him before, she most certainly is now.

The song ends, and it's followed by the Jonas Brothers. Darcy just can't find it within herself to leave.

So, naturally, she gets her super-spy on and watches him (as well as listens to some boppin' tunes – Steve's probably pissing his pants in anger that he can't get Barnes to listen to Motown.)

She is forced to vacate the premises when Nat finds her creeping, and starts laughing loud enough for Bucky to notice. (Nat's a good bro and blames her outburst on what he's listening to, so Darcy's off the hook this time.)

* * *

It's one of those evenings where everybody seems to be out and about but Darcy. Nat, Clint, Steve, and Sam decided to hit the town, Pepper and Tony are cooped up somewhere doing God only knows what, and Jane and Thor are defiantly getting it on like rabbits. She's pretty sure everyone else is sleeping because it's been a super exhausting week for everyone.

But she's on a mission. She's decided she's going to scour the depths of the internet to figure out how to swing dance. (Steve and Jane apparently don't believe that she can do it, and well, she's not one to go around and say she likes to prove Captain America wrong, but she likes to prove him wrong.)

She has JARVIS pull up some videos in the common room after she makes an effort to move the heavy couches out of the center of the floor. JARVIS also helps her find a dummy to practice with (what a sweetheart).

She's three hours in, and she thinks she's doing a fairly good job – she's by no means a professional and she's just about to quit when she crashes into the wall.

Except it's not a wall. It's Bucky Fuckin' Barnes.

And he's smirking that panty-dropping smirk he's got. Darcy is _mortified_. So mortified, in fact, that she just sort of stands there, leaning against him like he's a pillar staring up at his face for a good eighty-three seconds, before she trusts her brain to say something not terrible.

Also, something is starting to feel really really weird right about where his hand is lightly gripping her arm.

"Sorry," she blurts, looking down and pressing off against his chest so that she can stand up, "I've got two left feet, I guess – also, I wasn't really anticipating anyone to come in here and I don't know, watch me attempt to get my uncoordinated ass together and dance."

"Just returning the favor, doll." He grins wide. Darcy can feel the color drain from her cheeks.

"She wouldn't dare." She monotones.

"You're right, she wouldn't," he says, "but Clint would, especially after he caught you glitter bombing his apartment."

"Fuckin' Clint." she whispers, "I'm gonna kill him." She looks up at Bucky, who just looks amused by her misfortune, "I'm gonna kill him, and I'm gonna kill Nat and I'm probably gonna kill you."

"If you keep dancing like that, sweetheart, you're probably gonna end up taking out the whole damn tower."

"You know what, Barnes, if you're so good – which I know you are because for some odd reason, that was a fact included in one of my American History textbooks – why don't you get your perky ass over here and teach me."

"Sure thing."

Darcy would just like to reinforce her text book's claim that Bucky Barnes can dance, because _holy crap_ that book was not wrong. If anything, it was selling him short.

He leads her around the room, tells her not to think about what her feet are doing and just let them move. As soon as she knows it, she's swinging around the common room with the sweet sound of Sinatra's voice on the radio in Bucky's arms.

He's honest to God smiling and she thinks she's never seen anything so beautiful. (She's got it _so_ bad, it's pathetic.)

They call it quits about at about eleven thirty; he helps her set the room back up, then walks her too her apartment (it's only up two floors, but he's ever the gentleman when he's not busy being a giant flirt or a little shit.)

He bids her good night, and she kisses his cheek because of a spur of the moment decision; She's a mess. The door closes behind her and she slides down the wall and sits down with a sigh.

Damn him, damn Sinatra, and damn her for putting herself in this predicament in the first place.

* * *

She's about to step into the shower when she notices that there's a string of words on her bicep where that weird tingly feeling happened earlier when she crashed into Bucky.

And then she realizes it's a title of a song that she and Bucky were just dancing to.

Darcy may not have been one of those soulmate people before, and she totally disregarded any weird theories regarding the mark-less, but she's not stupid. She knows that this is important – and she decides to skip on her shower and head straight to Bucky's place (as soon as she gets some clothes on.)

* * *

She's pretty sure that she looks like a barreling idiot as she sprints down the hall to find his room in her flannel pajama pants and one of her too-big Doctor Who tee-shirts.

She almost collapses when she reaches his door and knocks. She's basically wheezing when he opens it – and he's only in a pair of low-slung sweats – holy mother of mercy.

"Do you have one of these too?" she huffs, trying to show him the scrawl of words on her bicep.

" _I Won't Dance_? Nope, but I do have _Burnin' Up_ sketched into my back." Darcy laughs.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Darcy Lewis and I'd formally like to apologize for my shit taste in music and, dude, that's the best fucking soulmark if I've ever seen one. Can't get any better than the Jonas Brothers."

"Bucky Barnes," he introduces himself, "and I don't know, Sinatra's pretty classy. Why don't you come in."

If at all possible, Darcy's smile grows even wider.

"You know what, Bucky, depending on how this night turns out, I might not kill the hawk-guy."

"Is that so?" he hums as he follows her to his couch.

"It better be." she says, "Now, get over here, asshole, I want you to serenade me with some emo tunes before I lose all my self-respect and fling myself at you."

Bucky's got this genuine look in his eyes, and before she knows it, he's sitting down next to her on the couch and singing the most terrible rendition of Sk8r Boi that she's ever heard.

It's definitely the beginning of the most epic of romances.

* * *

 **im back and worse than ever.**

 **happy belated thanksgiving to all my american pals, and if im not back in time, happy holidays!**

 **reviews/favorites/follows are the Han to my Chewie**


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